Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Vanity Fair, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Greed and Ambition
Vanity
Social Class and Character
Gender
Inheritance and Family Life
Summary
Analysis
When Miss Crawley sees that she has a visiting card from Lady Southdown, she isn’t sure what to make of it. She’s glad to have company at Brighton since her doctor has forbidden her from going back to London. When Pitt Crawley and Lady Jane arrive, Miss Crawley starts complaining about Napoleon, as many people do these days. Pitt Crawley impresses her by contradicting her and arguing about Napoleon’s good qualities. When asked for her own opinion, Lady Jane says she doesn’t understand politics.
Unlike Miss Crawley’s other relatives, who go out of their way to flatter her, Pitt Crawley dares to challenge Miss Crawley about her views on Napoleon. He seems to understand that Miss Crawley resents being coddled and that a part of her actually wants to be contradicted. While Lady Jane seems to be less cynical and greedy than her husband, she nevertheless plays her role perfectly, providing a meek counterpoint to Becky, whom Miss Crawley despises for how she’s influenced Rawdon.
Themes
After the visit, Miss Crawley tells Pitt Crawley that he can bring Lady Jane over whenever he likes, but she never wants to see the pompous Lady Southdown. Pitt Crawley and Lady Jane start coming over regularly. Pitt Crawley has been in love with Lady Jane for seven years, but he doesn’t feel any impatience. Over at the rectory, Mrs. Bute learns of how Pitt Crawley is trying to charm Miss Crawley. She decides to send her son James to Brighton to check on Miss Crawley. When Miss Crawley last saw James, he was at an awkward age where his voice was changing, but now he is a handsome Oxford student.
Lady Jane and Pitt Crawley both have the same name as their parents, representing how they are a continuation of the previous generation—and this is the quality that makes them appeal to the old Miss Crawley. Meanwhile, Mrs. Bute remains shameless about the tactics she’ll use to influence Miss Crawley, and so she sends over her son, hoping that a handsome young man will appeal more to her as an heir.
Themes
Despite growing up, James is awkward and struggles to impress Miss Crawley when he first shows up. Still, she invites him to dinner with Lady Jane and Pitt Crawley. At dinner, James’s cravat (ascot) looks too tight on him. Pitt Crawley encourages James to drink a lot of champagne, then he starts asking him questions about college. After dinner, Miss Crawley tells Pitt Crawley that James seems quiet and shy.
James’s tight cravat clearly symbolizes how he is out of his depth in trying to charm Miss Crawley. He is still young and seems to only be spending time with Miss Crawley because his mother told him to. Nevertheless, as Lady Jane demonstrates, Miss Crawley likes shy people, and James’s lack of guile could end up working in his favor.
Themes
Literary Devices
Miss Crawley invites James to dinner again the next night. He is livelier at this dinner, even making a couple of jokes toward Pitt Crawley. These comments bother Pitt Crawley a little, but he brushes them off. Afterward, James goes to bed. He feels good about his performance that evening and decides to smoke by the window where no one will smell it. But the wind blows the smoke in, and Miss Crawley smells it. That one pipe of tobacco likely costs Bute and Mrs. Bute thousands of pounds.
Ultimately, James’s lack of experience is his downfall, as he greatly underestimates how much Miss Crawley cares about smoking. He gets a little bit of confidence at dinner, and like many of the other characters, this causes him to overestimate his own ability to influence people. The short narrative of James is a microcosm for how pride (and perhaps vanity) causes the downfall of many of the other characters in the story.
Themes
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The next morning, James receives a message that Miss Crawley is too sick from tobacco smoke to come see him before he leaves. She also suggests that he go stay at a local alehouse instead of with her.
Miss Crawley’s language is deeply passive aggressive, cloaked in politeness but also implying clearly that he is out of contention for her inheritance.
Themes
Meanwhile, Becky and Rawdon have been having a pleasant winter of 1815 in Paris after Napoleon’s defeat at Waterloo. After selling her horses to Jos for such a good price, Becky has a decent fortune to her name. People in Paris love Becky, and they don’t mind that Rawdon isn’t very bright. One of Becky’s few failures is when Miss Crawley finds out that Becky and Rawdon have been talking about inheriting Miss Crawley’s fortune in order to impress potential new social connections in Paris. This makes Miss Crawley angry.
The novel takes a while to return its focus to Amelia (who is now a widow), focusing instead on the characters who return to their normal lives after war as if nothing has changed. In fact, Becky benefited from the conflict, managing to engage in some light war profiteering by selling her horse to Jos. The irony is that Jos lost a fortune when he never even needed the horse, since the fighting never reached Brussels. This absurd situation shows how the “benefits” of war don’t get distributed equally, with some people like Becky profiting while others suffer, raising questions about the moral justifications of war in general.
Themes
Literary Devices
Then, one day in the spring of 1816, Miss Crawley reads in the paper that Becky has given birth to a son. This infuriates her, since the paper announces him as an “heir.” In retaliation, she goes to the Southdowns and says that Pitt Crawley and Lady Jane have to get married immediately. They get married soon after this, and Miss Crawley promises them an annual allowance, with the rest going to them after her death. To Pitt Crawley’s dismay, after getting married, he ends up living with his new wife at Miss Crawley’s house without even a chance for a honeymoon. Immediately, Lady Southdown takes control of the household, and Miss Crawley becomes meek, constantly given medicine by a new doctor Lady Southdown hires.
Becky likely had some hand in the newspaper referring to her new son as an “heir,” as she tries to force Miss Crawley into acknowledging her son as an heir by putting it out in public and hoping Miss Crawley will be too embarrassed to contradict what the newspaper says. This desperate attempt has the opposite effect, confirming Miss Crawley’s choice of Pitt Crawley. Miss Crawley uses what remains of her influence to force Pitt Crawley to marry Lady Jane. Practically the minute she chooses an heir, Miss Crawley becomes irrelevant in the story, pushed aside by the commanding Lady Southdown. Although Miss Crawley has been a temperamental, controlling character, her powerless fate at the end of this chapter nevertheless generates sympathy.
Themes
